܀ Travel to the Islamic world allowed Europeans to visit, for the first time, the terrain of classical geography—including sacred Biblical cities, Homerian lands of the Illiad and the Odyssey, the sites of ancient battles between the Greeks and the Persians, as described by Herodotus, as well as Near Eastern monuments recorded in the Byzantine Suda. While most of the monuments, battles, and temples had long since past, maps provided a space for classical geographers to reimagine such ancient landscapes. Journeys to the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires exposed travellers to ancient Anatolian, Persian, and Indian monuments and sacred sites, broadening the scope of classical knowledge beyond the borders of ancient Greece. ܀

Maps of Ancient Persia and India

Persaru sive Parthorum Imperium (Ancient Persia); India Vetus (Old India)

Nicolas Sanson, Guillaume Sanson

1709

Paris

David Rumsey Map Collection

•

This set of maps shows the ancient Parthian Empire of Persia (247 BCE - 224 AD) alongside ancient India. The carefully colored outlines atop the printed black and white borders highlight individual regions. When this map was designed in Paris in 1709, a wealth of updated geographical information on the regions of India and Persia was readily available. However, cartographers were still interested in studying and reconstructing the ancient territories of the East and Near East.

Map of the Persian-Spartan War

Plan of the Pass of Thermopylae

Jean-Denis Barbié Du Bocage

1793

London (English edition); originally 1784 Paris.

David Rumsey Map Collection

•

Bocage, a French cosmographer who was the Royal Librarian of France, provided this map of the Pass of Thermopylae in Greece for the 1787 book Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece. The Travels was a fictional history based on the life of Anacharsis, a Scythian philosopher of Iranian origin who really traveled to Athens in the sixth century BCE. Here we see a reconstruction of the battle site where the Persian King Xerxes I defeated the Spartan fleet of King Leonidas, a narrow coastal passageway that no longer exists.

Ancient Gardens of Daphne; Alexander the Great’s Expedition Through Persia

Daphne; Alexandri Magni Macedonis Expeditio

Abraham Ortelius, Jan Baptista Vrients

1595

Antwerp

David Rumsey Map Collection

•

These two engravings come from the Parergon Theatri, a lesser-known work of the Flemish cartographer Ortelius. The Parergon was a personal passion project for Ortelius, where he created original and hand drawn maps of the entire classical world.

Above, his reconstruction of Daphne (a coastal Turkish province near Antioch) offers a glimpse into the forested garden palaces and bathhouses of the ancient Seleucid Empire. The use of Renaissance architecture shows how European scholars visualized the past in terms of their present.

Below, Ortelius indexes the expeditions of Alexander the Great through the Iranian plateau. Among his cartographical sources, Ortelius includes Greek scholars, like Pliny and Strabo, alongside more obscure Eastern chronicles, such as the history of the Siwa Oasis and the Egyptian whispering statue of Mnemon.

Genealogical Charts of Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Kings

Succession des Rois de Perse Anciens & Modernes; Genealogie des Empereurs Mogols; Carte genealogique de la suite des Empereurs d'Orient

Henri Chatelain, Nicolas Gueudeville

1714-1720

Amsterdam

David Rumsey Map Collection

•

These charts are from a seven-volume history and genealogy of the continents, an encyclopedic project whose maps included information on cosmography, geography, history, chronology, genealogy, topography, heraldry, and costumes of the world. These three genealogical maps chart the ancestral lineage of Ottoman sultans, Safavid shahs, and Mughal kings, demonstrating an attempt to reconcile ancient and early modern history. Notice how the Persian chart below at left features two trees; the one on the right traces the Turkish origin of Safavid and earlier Timurid kings.

Ancient Tombs of Persian Kings Near Persepolis

Description Des Tombeaux & Autres Monumens Anciens que l'On Trouve non Loin de Persepolis

Henri Chatelain, Nicolas Gueudeville

1719

Amsterdam

David Rumsey Map Collection

•

Scholars of classical geography were fascinated by the history of Persian kings. This spread, included in Chatelain’s history and genealogy of Persia, offers a rare printed view of the monumental burial site Naqsh-e Rostam. The tombs of the Achaemenid kings Darius the Great, Darius II, Darius III, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes III were carved into towering cliffs near the ancient site of Persepolis. The figures observing the tombs help the viewer understand the site’s colossal scale. Chatelain likely consulted the travelogues and maps of earlier European traders and ambassadors, such as Adam Olearius, that had travelled to the Safavid Empire.

Bahram Gur in the Room of the Seven Portraits

Anthology of Iskandar Sultan (r. 1409 to 1414)

Copied by Mahmud ibn Murtaza Al-Husayni and Hasan al-Hafiz

Iran, Shiraz, 1411(dated 813 Hijra), Timurid period

Ink, watercolour and gold on paper

27,4 x 17,2 cm

Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon

LA161, fol. 66v

Courtesy Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon - Calouste Gulbenkian Museum

photo: Catarina Gomes Ferreira

•

A reciprocal study of classical geography was not paralleled by Islamic cartographers in precisely the same mode as the studies shown above. Early Islamic cosmography conceived of the world as divided into seven climes or countries: India, Rum, Choresmina, Slavonia, Maghreb, China, and Iran. Such cosmographies were visualized by Islamic poets and artists. In the example shown here, a scene from the medieval Persian poet Nezami’s Haft Paykar (Seven Princesses), each clime is represented by a different colored dome and ruled by its own planet. These miniatures functioned as maps of cosmographical and celestial knowledge, a tradition of Islamic classical geography that continued into the early modern period.